


He Doesn't Feel Alone

by StrayLiger



Category: Gundam 00
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 13:39:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16019060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrayLiger/pseuds/StrayLiger
Summary: Ian keeps, on the high shelf of his closet, inside two large shoe boxes, a collection of photographs.





	He Doesn't Feel Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Uhh so I wrote a Gundam 00 thing-nothing too complex, just some Ian being old and sad. It’s kind of my first time writing something like this AND my first time posting to AO3 so I’m hoping I did it right;;;?
> 
> I wrote this before leaving on vacation when I was in a not very good place mentally and it came out kind of good so a friend asked me to post it and here it is. 
> 
> I will probably edit the tags later to add other characters and stuff but yeah for the time being enjoy QvQ;/

Ian Vashti can’t really say that he feels lonely.

The Ptolemaios is a small ship, and he’s constantly surrounded by people; really, there isn’t a lot of space to be alone. And honestly, since he joined Celestial Being, privacy and space are something he has never had in abundance-which is ironic. To live in space, and to think of space as a luxury.

But sometimes it is impossible not to feel like the world has left him behind. Mileina has become a woman, Setsuna is gone. So many people have died. But Ian has remained the same-perhaps with just a little bit more grey hair at his temples and worse eyesight, but mostly the same. And that’s when something that resembles loneliness starts bothering him, just a little bit at first, light enough to ignore and then to the point where it won’t let him move without feeling it, like he’s noticed his joints sometimes do. It’s okay, though. He knows what to do.

Ian keeps, on the high shelf of his closet, inside two large shoe boxes, a collection of photographs.

It’s a habit he started when he was young. He’s not old enough to remember when physical, printed photos were the norm, but he has always liked keeping physical copies. There’s something that makes the past feel less far, less absent, when he holds one.

He couldn’t bring his old picture collection with him when he joined Celestial Being, decades ago. But it doesn’t matter: time made sure he could start his collection of paper memories again. He bought an old, beat up polaroid in a trip to earth at a vintage store, and with time people started giving him more-things they had brought up with them, that they didn’t want to keep around anymore, but couldn’t bear getting rid of.

Linda offered to organize them in an album, chronologically-she’s always been like that, methodical and orderly, like clockwork, and it’s one of the reasons he fell head over heels for her-but Ian refused. He likes sitting down on his bunk and dumping the contents of the boxes in front of him.

He dislikes the way his memory insists in trying to arrange the events of his past in a timeline. He likes to remember in a more organic way, and this helps. He borrowed some whisky from Sumeragi, to make the trip down memory lane less painful, because as much as he likes memories, some of them cut like broken glass.

The first picture is one of himself and Joyce, weeks after being recruited into Celestial Being. He’s held him many times in his hands, so often that there’s a visible stain on the corner where his fingers have been. They’re standing next to each other somewhere where a window provides a backdrop of black void and stars that shine like cold, hard diamonds, laughing. Ian smiles a little, even though it hurts now, to think about Joyce Moreno. The next one he picks up is framed-Linda had it framed, of course. In this one, she’s in bed, holding Mileina, hours after giving birth to her, and he’s sitting next to them, with an arm around Linda’s shoulders. Somehow, Linda managed to look like an angel even after bringing a child to the world. Ian smiles wider.

He takes a sip of whisky.

There’s so many good ones, he thinks. Sumeragi, Feldt and Chris, laughing around a red haro on which someone (Lichty, if he remembers correctly), drew eyebrows on with marker; Lockon (the first one), petting a random dog they found on the beach one day; Allelujah, asleep inside the Kyrios, drooling; Feldt as an infant, pulling on her dad’s bright red hair. A very young Setsuna in front of the Exia, stone faced, but very obviously still a child, caramel colored eyes large and curiously intense. Mileina in her Celestial Being uniform, the day she joined the crew. Tieria, wearing a ridiculous Christmas sweater, looking ready to kill whoever was behind the camera (it was laundry day). Marie and Allelujah in front of a church, that time they went to earth. Chall Accustica in her old school uniform, in front of the Astraea, looking like the happiest girl in the world. Christina and Lichty, with their heads poking out of the same sweater (it had taken them a while to get out of it after), with a very blurry Sumeragi in the background. Anew hugging Mileina, both of them laughing. Lasse beating Lockon at an arm-wrestling contest. Lockon, with his arms over Setsuna and Feldt’s shoulders. Ian himself, posing with the haros and giving the camera a thumbs up.

There are some disconcerting ones, of course. Mostly, the ones he got from others. Like the one Lasse asked him to keep for him one day, shortly after they met. Lasse never talks about it, and Ian has never asked, and doesn’t intend to. It’s a picture taken in a studio of a man and a woman against a dark blue background-the woman has beautiful brown eyes, and curly dark hair, and his resemblance with Lasse is more than evident (god, she even has the same fucking scar on her chin), but there isn’t much that can be said about the man, because his face has been furiously scribbled on with black pen, obscuring his features completely. There’s a name in the back, that has also been scratched out. Ian doesn’t even take that one out of the box.

Christina, posing in front of a nondescript monument and wearing a cowboy hat. The Dynames against the backdrop of a gorgeous sunset. Sumeragi, Feldt, Chris and Wang Liu Mei posing on the Exia’s open hand. Lichty and Lasse. Lockon II (at some point, Ian thinks, he will have to start calling them by their actual names, but he’s a man of habit) and Anew sitting next to each other, her arm around his and her head on his shoulder.

There’s the picture of a group of pale children in hospital gowns, like 30 of them, posing with a nurse with an unnaturally inexpressive face. If he squints hard, he can make out a delicate looking child with a large bandage on his head and straight dark hair that falls over his right eye, staring at the camera with unmistakable sadness: Allelujah. He doesn’t know where that one came from. He places it delicately back in the box. Maybe he will give it to Allelujah, or Marie, eventually.

Allelujah and Lockon playing cards. Joyce Moreno and Sumeragi, laughing at something. Tieria and Setsuna. Linda holding a five-year-old Mileina. The Second Generation Gundam Meisters, all standing with arms linked in front of the Plutone, smiling wide. Haro with a Christmas hat. 

There’s the one that Feldt recovered from the wreckage of the Ptolemy after Fallen Angels and gave to him. It’s a picture of a family standing in front of a Christmas tree: a man, a woman, and three children. The three children have their father’s brown hair and their mother’s striking teal eyes. It’s very easy to figure out who two of them are. They are like carbon copies of each other-they both have the same soft, brown hair, the same green blue eyes, and they’re even missing the same two front teeth, giving them the same comical, impish appearance. The only difference is their sweaters-one of them is wearing one with a large L at the front, and the other one has an N. The little girl that he assumes must be their little sister is standing between them, wearing a sweater with an A at the front, and a tutu, because of course. The three children have their father’s brown hair and their mother’s striking teal colored eyes.

Ian will have to give that one to Lockon one of these days. He takes another sip of whisky, noticing there’s a knot in his throat, and can’t help but smile when he sees one that he took himself of Feldt, Chris, Lichty and Lasse, sleeping bundled up in a single blanket in the hangar, like children.

He picks another one at random and is greeted with a young woman with auburn hair and brown eyes (it’s incredible to see that there was a time when Sumeragi’s eyes weren’t sad, like Allelujah’s: the girl in the picture looks forward with a security and cheerfulness that the Ptolemaios’ strategist doesn’t posess), arm in arm with a guy wearing glasses, his hair also gathered in a ponytail. Sumeragi gave him that one, one day when she’d been drinking heavily, a little after she came back to the Ptolemy. She asked him to put it where she couldn’t see it. She also gave him another one of herself, a few years older, wearing an AEU uniform, hugging a tall, handsome man. This one, like the one Ian has of Joyce and himself, is worn around the edges, and there’s a white mark in the middle, from where it was folded.

It feels odd, to be looking like this at those pictures. Like overhearing a conversation. These memories are not meant for him. Ian quickly puts those away back in the box, along with Lasse’s mysterious family photo.

Ian leans back, lost in thought. Why keep something like that, if it brings so much pain? He concludes that sometimes we have to remember bad things too, so the good ones have meaning. Sumeragi, Lasse, Tieria, Allelujah, Lockon, Feldt. They have all see enough bad things. Ian thinks that he should show them the good photos, someday. He wishes he had showed them to Setsuna. Wherever he is now, he hopes he can take good pictures.

He realizes that, in the low gravity, the photos have started to float off the bed, and he wants to curse for forgetting about it, but somehow, the image of all those faces looking back at him, scattered in the narrow space of his room like the stars in the sky, is something he likes. From one of them, Chris and Lichty, wearing ridiculous hear shaped glasses, smile at him, and Ian smiles back.

In that moment, they are all there, inside his room, and he doesn’t feel alone.


End file.
